Rick Santelli, the television reporter who will go down in history as the godfather of the Tea Party movement, says he has never been as proud as the moment he set light to a tinderbox that is changing the face of American politics.

Santelli, a business journalist who reports from the floor of the Chicago board of trade for CNBC, is widely credited as providing the spark that ignited the explosion of the movement. He did so in a now famous two-minute diatribe, known in folklore as "the rant", in which he berated the fledgling Obama administration for bailing out what he called "losers" by buying up bad mortgages in the housing crisis.

Since his speech, on 19 February 2009, Santelli has largely kept out of the political debate raging around the Tea Party. He is not proactively involved in the movement, and rarely refers to it.

But he told the Guardian at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange, where the trading floor is located, that he had "never been more proud to be an American" than when he made that speech.

"I struck a nerve that people felt so strongly. If the tea parties happened because I threw a match into a tinderbox, then I am proud I did it."

Santelli said he was happy about the role history would give him. "Challenging leaders is as American as it gets. The unique thing about our country is that we don't get behind politicians, politicians get behind us."

In his speech, delivered direct to camera less than a month after Barack Obama's inauguration, Santelli ridiculed the new federal government scheme to give some help to homeowners who had fallen into trouble with their mortgage payments. He called them "losers' mortgages".

When he asked rhetorically whether it was time for the government to start rewarding "people who could carry the water instead of drink the water" he evoked a huge cheer from the equity traders hard at work behind him on the trading floor. "This is America!" he said in response.

He prompted further cheers when he added: "We're thinking of having a Chicago tea party in July."

Jeff Carter, a trader who worked on the floor until earlier this year, said Santelli's criticism of government assistance resonated with so many of his fellow traders because they were all self-employed and accustomed to standing on their own feet. "When you are facing the wilderness on your own, you have a totally different attitude to someone who works in government or who has a monthly cheque."

"The rant" was quickly posted on YouTube and went viral across America. Lobbying groups such as FreedomWorks, a key rightwing campaign that has supported the growth of the Tea Party, circulated the footage to its 800,000 supporters and set up a dedicated website, IamWithRick.com.

Eight days after the broadcast, the first Tea Party protests were being held in Washington, Chicago and around the nation.